say if she broke his top bar. . . . The mare's feet touched it lightly--
rap, rap.  She was over.

A wood pile stood within the gate to the left, hiding the house.  She
had passed the corner of it before she could bring Madcap to a
standstill, and was laughing to herself in triumph as she glanced
around.

Heavens!

The house was of timber, with a deep timbered verandah; and in the
verandah, not twenty paces away, beside a table laid for coffee, stood
Tatty with three ladies about her--three ladies all elegantly dressed
and staring.

Ruth's hand went up quickly, involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and
at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from
captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the
yard towards her, almost at a run.

"Ruth, dear!" she panted.  "Oh, dear, dear! I am so glad you have come!"

"Why, what's the matter?"  The girl, scenting danger, faced it.
She swung herself down from the saddle-crutch, picked up her skirt, and
taking Madcap's rein close beside the curb, walked slowly up to the
verandah.  "Have they been bullying you, dear?" she asked in a low quiet
voice.

"They have come all this way to see us--Lady Caroline Vyell, and Miss
Diana; yes, and Mrs. Captain Vyell--'Mrs. Harry,' as Dicky calls her.
They have ferreted us out, somehow--and the questions they have been
asking!  I think, dear--I really think--that in your place I should walk
Madcap round to her stable and run indoors for a tidy-up before facing
them.  A minute or two to prepare yourself--I can easily make your
excuses."

"And a moment since you were calling me to come and deliver you!"
answered Ruth, still advancing.  "Present me, please."

Little Miss Quiney, turning and running ahead, stammered some words to
Lady Caroline, who paid no heed to them or to her but kept her eyeglass
lifted and fixed upon Ruth.  Miss Diana stood a pace behind her mother's
shoulder; Mrs. Harry, after a glance at the girl, turned and made
pretence to busy herself with the coffee-table.

"So _you_ are the young woman!" ejaculated Lady Caroline.

"Am I?" said Ruth quietly, and after a profound curtsy turned sideways
to the mare.  "A lump of sugar, Tatty, if you please. . . . I thank
you, ma'am--" as Mrs. Harry, anticipating Miss Quiney, stepped forward
with a piece held between the sugar-tongs.  "And I think she even
deserves a second, for clearing the yard gate."

She fed the gentle creature and dismissed her.  "Now trot around to your
stall and ask one of the boys to unsaddle you!"  She stood for ten
seconds, may be, watching as the mare with a fling of the head trotted
off obediently.  Then she turned again and met Mrs. Harry's eyes with a
frank smile.

"It is the truth," she said.  "We cleared the gate.  Come, please, and
admire--"

Mrs. Harry, in spite of herself, stepped down from the verandah and
followed.  The others stood as they were, planted in stiff disapproval.

The girl led Mrs.  Harry to the corner of the wood pile.  "Admire!" she
repeated, pointing with her riding-switch; and then, still keeping the
gesture, she sank her voice and asked quickly, "Why are you here?
You have a good face, not like the others.  Tell me."

"Lady Caroline--" stammered Mrs. Harry, taken at unawares.  "She has a
right, naturally, to concern herself--"

"Does _he_ know?"

"Sir Oliver?  No--I believe not. . . . You see, the Vyells are a great
family, and 'family' to them is a tremendous affair--a religion almost.
Whatever touches one touches all; especially when that one happens to be
the head of his house."

"Is that how Captain Vyell--how your husband--feels it?--No, please keep
looking towards the gate.  I mean no harm by these questions, and you
will not mind answering them, I hope?  It gives me just a little more
chance of fair play."

"To tell you the truth," said Mrs. Harry, pretending to study the jump,
"I looked at you because I could not help it.  You are an
extraordinarily beautiful woman."

"Thank you," answered Ruth.  "But about 'Captain Harry,' as we call him?
I suppose he, as next of kin, is most concerned of all?"

"He did not tell me about you, if that is what you mean; or rather he
told me nothing until I questioned him.  Then he owned that there was
such a person, and that he had seen you.  But he does not even know of
this visit; he imagines that Lady Caroline is taking me for a pleasure
trip, just to view the country."

Ruth turned towards the house.  "You will tell him, of course," she said
gravely, "when you return to the ship."

"I--I suppose I shall," confessed Mrs.  Harry, and added, "There's one
thing.  You may suppose that, as his wife, I am as much concerned as
any--perhaps more than these others.  But I don't want you to think that
I suggested hunting you up."

"I do not think anything of the sort.  In fact I am sure you did not."

"Thank you."

Ruth had a mind to ask "Who, then, had brought them?" but refrained.
She had guessed, and pretty surely.

"Well," she said with half a laugh, "you have been good and given me
time to recover.  It's heavy odds, you see, and--and I have not been
trained for it, exactly.  But I feel better.  Shall we go back and face
them?"

"One moment, again!"  Mrs. Harry's kindly face hung out signals of
distress.  "It's heavy odds, as you say.  Everything's against you.
But the Lord knows I'm a well-meaning woman, and I'd hate to be unjust.
If only I could be sure--if only you would tell me--"

Ruth stood still and faced her.

"Look in my eyes."

Mrs. Harry looked and was convinced.  "But you love him," she murmured;
"and he--"

"Ah, ma'am," said Ruth, "I answer you one question, and you would ask me
another!"



Chapter XII.


LADY CAROLINE.


She walked back to the verandah.

"I understand," she said, "that Lady Caroline wishes a word with me."

With a slight bow she led the way through a low window that opened upon
the Corderys' best parlour, through that apartment, and across a passage
to the door of a smaller room lined with shelves--formerly a stillroom
or store-chamber for home-made wines, cordials, preserves, but now
converted into a boudoir for her use.  Its one window looked out upon
the farmyard, now in shadow, and a farther doorway led to the dairy.
It stood open, and beyond it the eye travelled down a vista of cool
slate flags and polished cream-pans.

On the threshold Ruth stood aside to let Lady Caroline enter; followed,
and closed the door; stepped across and closed the door of the dairy.
Lady Caroline meanwhile found a seat, and, lifting her eyeglass, studied
at long range the library disposed upon the store shelves.

"We had best be quite frank," said she, as Ruth came back and stood
before her.

"If you please."

"Of course it is all very scandalous and--er--nauseating, though I dare
say you are unable to see it in that light.  I merely mention it in
justice to myself, lest you should mistake me as underrating or even
condoning Sir Oliver's conduct.  You will guess, at any rate, how it
must shock my daughter."

"Yes," said Ruth; and added, "Why did you bring her?"

The girl's attitude--erect before her, patient, but unflinching--had
already gone some way to discompose Lady Caroline.  This straight
question fairly disconcerted her; the worse because she could not
quarrel with the tone of it.

"I wish," she answered, "my Diana to face the facts of life, ugly though
they may be."  As if aware that this hardly carried conviction--for,
despite herself, something in Ruth began to impress her--she shifted
ground and went on, "But we will not discuss my daughter, please.
The point is, this state of things cannot continue.  It may be hard for
you--I am trying to take your view of it--but what may pass in a young
man of blood cannot be permitted when he succeeds to a title and the--
er--headship of his family.  It becomes then his duty to give that
family clean heirs.  I put it plainly?"

Ruth bent her head for assent.

"Oliver Vyell, as no doubt you know, has already been mixed up in one
entanglement, and has a child for reminder."

"Oh, but Dicky is the dearest child!  The sweetest-natured, the
cleanest-minded!  Have you not seen him yet?"

Lady Caroline stared.  As little as royalty did she understand being
cross-questioned.  It gave her a quite unexpected sense of helplessness.

"I fear you do not at all grasp the position," she said severely.
"After all, I had done better to disregard your feelings, whatever they
may be, and come to terms at once."

"No," answered Ruth, musing; "I do not understand the position; but I
want to, more than I can say--and your ladyship must help me, please."
She paused a moment.  "In New England we prize good birth, good
breeding, and what we too call 'family'; but I think the word must mean
something different to you who live at home in England."

"I should hope so!" breathed Lady Caroline.

"It must be mixed up somehow with the great estates you have held for
generations and the old houses you have lived in.  No," she went on, as
Lady Caroline would have interrupted; "please let me work it out in my
own way, and then you shall correct me where I am wrong. . . . I have
often thought how beautiful it must be to live in such an old house, one
that has all its corners full of memories--the nurseries most of all--
of children and grandchildren, that have grown up in gentleness and
courtesy and honour--"

"Good Lord!" Lady Caroline interjected.  "You mean"--Ruth smiled--
"that I am talking like a book?  That is partly my fault and partly our
New England way; because, you see, we have to get at these things from
books.  Does it, after all, matter how--if only we get it right? . . .
There's a tradition--what, I believe, you call an 'atmosphere'--and you
are proud of it and very jealous."

"If you see all this," said Lady Caroline, mollified, "our business
should be easier, with a little common sense on your part."

"And it knits you," pursued Ruth, "into a sort of family conspiracy--
the womenkind especially--like bees in a hive.  The head of the family
is the queen bee, and you respect him amazingly; but all the same you
keep your own judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey him,
for his own and the family's good.  I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in
coming here; or, at least, deceived him and came here without his
knowledge."

"I am not accustomed," said Lady Caroline, rising, "to direct my conduct
upon my nephew's advice."

"That, more or less, is what I was trying to say.  Dear madam, let me
warn you to do so, if you would manage his private affairs."

They faced each other now, upon declared war.  Lady Caroline's neck was
suffused to a purplish red behind the ears.  She gasped for speech.
Before she found it there came a tapping on the door, and Diana Vyell
entered.



Chapter XIII.


DIANA VYELL.


"Have you not finished yet?"  Miss Diana closed the door, glanced from
one to the other, and laughed with a genial brutality.  "Well, it's time
I came.  Dear mamma, you seem to be getting your feathers pulled."

There was a byword among the Whig families at home (who, by
intermarrying, had learned to gauge another's weaknesses), that
"the Pett medal showed ill in reverse."  Miss Diana had heard the
saying.  As a Vyell--the Vyells were, before all things, critical--she
knew it to be just, as well as malicious; but as a dutiful daughter she
ought to have remembered.

As it was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury.  The poor lady
pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word
for the very inelegant exhibition),--

"A strumpet!  One that has been whipped through the public streets."

There was a dreadful pause.  Miss Diana, the first to recover herself,
stepped back to the door and held it open.

"You must excuse dear mamma," she said coolly.  "She has overtired
herself."

But Lady Caroline continued to point a finger trembling with passion.

"Her price!" she shrilled.  "Ask her that.  It is all these creatures
ever understand!"

Miss Diana slipped an arm beneath her elbow and firmly conducted her
forth.  Ruth, hearing the door shut, supposed that both women had
withdrawn.  She sank into a chair, and was stretching out her arms over
the table to bury her face in them and sob, when the voice of the
younger said quietly behind her shoulder,--

"It is always hard, after mamma's tantrums, to bring the talk back to a
decent level.  Nevertheless, shall we try?"

Ruth had drawn herself up again, rallying the spirit in her.  It was
weary, bruised; but its hour of default was not yet.  Her voice dragged,
but just perceptibly, as she answered Miss Vyell, who nodded, noting her
courage and wondering a little,--

"I am sorry."

"Sorry?"

"Yes; it was partly my fault--very largely my fault.  But your mother
angered me from the first by assuming--what she had no right to assume.
It was horrible."

Diana Vyell seated herself, eyed her steadily for a moment, and nodded
again.  "Mamma can be _raide_, there's no denying.  She was wrong, of
course; that's understood. . . . Still, on the whole you have done
pretty well, and had your revenge."

Ruth's eyes widened, for this was beyond her.

Diana explained.  "You have let us make the most impossible fools of
ourselves.  It may have been more by luck than by good management, as
they say; but there it is.  Now don't say that revenge isn't sweet.
. . . I've done you what justice I can; but if you pose as an angel from
heaven, it's asking too much."  While Ruth considered this, she added,
"I don't know if you can put yourself in mamma's place for a moment; but
if you can, the hoax is complete enough, you'll admit."

"I had rather put myself in yours."

Their eyes met, and Diana's cheek reddened slightly.  "You are an
extraordinary girl," she said, "and there seems no way but to be honest
with you.  Unfortunately, it's not so easy, even with the best will in
the world.  Can you understand _that?_"

"If you love him--"

"Oh, for pity's sake spare me!" Diana bounced up and stepped to the
window.  The red on her cheek had deepened, and she averted it to stare
out at the poultry in the yard.  "You are unconscionable," she said
after a while, with a vexed laugh.  "I have known my cousin Oliver since
we were children together.  Really, you know, you're almost as brutal as
mamma. . . . The truth?  Let me see.  Well, the truth, so near as I can
tell it, is that I just let mamma have her head, and waited to see what
would happen.  This was her expedition, and I took no responsibility for
it from the first."

"I understand." Ruth, watching the back of her head, spoke musingly,
with pursed lips.

"Excuse me"--Diana wheeled about suddenly--"you cannot possibly
understand just yet.  This last was my tenth season in London.
One grows weary . . . and then in the confusion of papa's death--
It comes to this, that I was ready for anything to get out of the old
rut.  I--I--shall we say that I just cast myself on fate?  It may have
been at the back of my head that whatever happened might be worse, but
couldn't well be wearier.  But if you think I had any design of setting
my cap at him--"

"Hush!" said Ruth softly.  "I had no such thought."

"And if you had, you would not have cared," said Diana, eyeing her again
long and steadily.  "Mamma--you really must forgive mamma.  If you knew
them, there was never a Pett that was not _impayable_.  Mamma spoke of
asking your price. . . . As if, for any price, he would give you up!"

"I have no price to ask, of him or of any one."

"No, and you need have none.  I am often very disagreeable," said Diana
candidly, "but my worst enemy won't charge me with disparaging good
looks in other women."

"May I use your words," said Ruth, with a shy smile, "and say that you
have no need?"

"Rubbish!  And don't talk like that to me, sitting here and staring you
in the face, or I may change my mind again and hate you!  I never said I
didn't _envy_. . . . But there, the fault was mine for speaking of
'good looks' when I should have said, 'Oh, you wonder!'" broke off
Diana.  "May I ask it--one question?"

"Twenty, if you will."

"It is a brutal one; horrible; worse even than mamma's."

"As I remember," said Ruth gravely, "Lady Caroline asked none.  It was I
who did the questioning, and--and I am afraid that led to the trouble."

Diana laughed, and after a moment the two were laughing together.

"But what is your question?"

"No, I cannot ask it now." Diana shook her head, and was grave again.

"Please!"

"Well, then, tell me--"  She drew back, slightly tilting her chin and
narrowing her eyes, as one who contemplates a beautiful statue or other
work of art.  "Is it true they whipped _that_, naked, through the
streets?"

Ruth bent her head.

"It is true."

"I wonder it did not kill you," Diana murmured.

"I am strong; strong and very healthy. . . . It broke something inside;
I hardly know what.  But there's a story--I read it the other day--about
a man who wandered in a dark wood, and came to a place where he looked
into hell.  Just one glimpse.  He fainted, and when he awoke it was
daylight, with the birds singing all around him.  But he was changed
more than the place, for he listened and understood all the woodland
talk--what the birds were saying, and the small creeping things.
And when he went back among men he answered at random, and yet in a way
that astonished them; for he saw and heard what their hearts were
saying, at the back of their talk. . . . Of course," smiled Ruth,
"I am not nearly so wonderful as that.  But something has happened to
me--"

Diana nodded slowly.  "--Something that, at any rate, makes you terribly
disconcerting.  But what about Oliver?  They tell me that he browbeat
the magistrates and insisted on sitting beside you."

Ruth's eyes confirmed it.  They were moist, yet proud.  They shone.

"I had always," mused Diana, "looked on my cousin as a carefully selfish
person, even in the matter of that Dance woman.  You must have turned
his head completely."

"It was not _that_."

Diana stared, the low tone was so earnest, vehement even.  "Well, at all
events I know him well enough to assure you he will never give you up."

"Ah!" Ruth drew a long sigh over the joy in her heart, and, a second
later, hated herself for it.

"--until afterwards."

"Afterwards?" the girl echoed.

"Afterwards.  My cousin Oliver is a tenacious man, and you would seem to
have worked him up to temporary heroics.  But I beg you to reflect that
what for you must have been a real glimpse into hell"--Diana shivered--"
was likely enough for him no more than an occasion for posing.
Fine posing, I'll allow." She paused.  "It didn't degrade him, actually.
He's a Vyell; and as another of 'em I may tell you there never was a
Vyell could face out actual degradation.  You almost make me wish we
were capable of it.  To lose everything--"  She paused again.
"You make it more alluring, somehow, than the prospect of endless London
seasons--Diana Vyell, with a fading face and her market missed--that's
how they'll put it--and, _pour me distraire_ this side of the grave, the
dower-house, a coach, a pair of wind-broken horses, and the consolations
of religion!  If we were capable of it. . . . But where's the use of
talking?  We're Vyells.  And--here's my point--Oliver is a Vyell.
He may be strong-willed, but--did mamma happen to talk at all about the
'Family'?"

"I think," answered Ruth with another faint flash of mirth, "it was I
who asked her questions about it."

Diana threw out her hands, laughing.  "You are invincible!  Well, I
cannot hate you; and I've given you my warning.  Make him marry you; you
can if you choose, and now is your time.  If there should be children--
legitimate children, O my poor mamma!--there will be the devil to pay
and helpless family councils, all of which I shall charge myself to
enjoy and to report to you.  If there should be none, we're safe with
Mrs. Harry.  She'll breed a dozen. . . . Am I coarse? Oh, yes, the
Vyells can be coarse! while as for the Petts--but you have heard dear
mamma."


They talked together for a few minutes after this.  But their talk shall
not be reported: for with what do you suppose it dealt?

--With Dress.  As I am a living man, with Dress.

In the midst of it, and while Ruth listened eagerly to what Diana had to
tell of London fashions, Lady Caroline's voice was heard summoning her
daughter away.

Diana rose.  "It is close upon dusk," she said, "and Mrs. Harry has
command of the waggon.  She drives very well--not better than I perhaps;
but she understands this country better.  All the same, the road--call
it an apology for one--bristles with tree-stumps, and mamma's temper
will be unendurable if the dark overtakes us before we reach the next
farm.  I forget its name."

"Natchett?"

"Yes, Natchett.  We spend the night there."

"But why did not Mr. Silk drive you over?"

"Did mamma tell you he was escorting us?"

"No.  I guessed."

"Nasty little fellow.  Sloppy underlip.  I cannot bear him.  Can you?"

"I do not like him."

"It's a marvel to me that my cousin tolerates him. . . . By the way, I
shall not wonder if he--Oliver, I mean--loses his temper heavily when he
learns of our expedition, and bundles us straight back to Europe.
I warned mamma."

"So--I am afraid--did I."

"Yes?"--and again they laughed together.

"My poor parent! . . . She assured me that her duty to the Family was
her armour of proof.  Hark!  She's calling again."


They found Lady Caroline impatient in the verandah.  Ruth, to avoid
speech with her, walked away to the waggon.  Farmer Cordery stood at the
horse's head, and Mrs. Harry beside the step, ready to mount and take
the reins.

But for some reason Mrs. Harry delayed to mount.  "Is it you?" she said
vaguely and put out a hand, swaying slightly.  Ruth caught it.

"Are you ill?"

They were alone together for a moment and hidden from the farmer, who
stood on the far side of the horse.

"Nothing--a sudden giddiness.  It's quite absurd, too; when I've been as
strong as a donkey all my life."

Ruth asked her a question. . . . Some word of woman's lore, dropped
years ago by her own silly mother, crossed her memory.  (They had been
outspoken, in the cottage above the beach.)  It surprised Mrs. Harry,
who answered it before she was well aware, and so stood staring,
trembling with surmise.

"God bless you!"  Ruth put out an arm on an impulse to clasp her waist,
but checked it and beckoned instead to Diana.

"_You_ take the reins and drive," she commanded.

Diana questioned her with a glance, but obeyed and climbed on board.
Ruth was helping Mrs. Harry to mount after her when Lady Caroline thrust
herself forward, by the step.

Now since Diana had hold of the reins, and Mrs. Harry was for the moment
in no condition to lend a hand, and since Lady Caroline would as lief
have touched leprosy as have accepted help from Ruth Josselin, her
ascent into the van fell something short of dignity.  The rearward of
her person was ample; she hitched her skirt in the step, thus exposing
an inordinate amount of not over-clean white stocking; and, to make
matters worse, Farmer Cordery cast off at the wrong moment and stood
back from the horse's head.

"Losh! but I'm sorry," said he, gazing after the catastrophic result.
"Look at her, there, kickin' like a cast ewe. . . ."  He turned a
serious face on Ruth and added, "Vigorous, too, for her years."


Ruth, returning to the verandah, bent over little Miss Quiney, who sat
unsmiling, with rigid eyes.  "Dear Tatty,"--she kissed her--"were they
so very dreadful?"

Miss Quiney started as if awaking from a nightmare.

"That woman--darling, whatever her rank, I _cannot_ term her a lady!--"

"Go on, dear."

"I cannot.  Sit beside me, here, for a while, and let me feel my arm
about you. . . ."

They sat thus for a long while silent, while twilight crept over the
plain and wrapped itself about the homestead.

Ruth was thinking.  "If I forfeit this, it will be hardest of all."



Chapter XIV.


MR. SILK PROPOSES.


Farmer Cordery had six grown sons--Jonathan, George, William, Increase,
Homer, and Lemuel--the eldest eight-and-twenty, the youngest sixteen.
All were strapping fellows, and each as a matter of course had fallen
over head and ears in love with Ruth.

They were good lads and knew it to be hopeless.  She had stepped into
their home as a goddess from a distant star, to abide with them for a
while.  They worshipped, none confessing his folly; but it made them her
slaves, and emulous to shine before her as though she had been a queen
of tournay.  Because of her presence (it must be sadly owned)
challengings, bickerings, even brotherly quarrels, disturbed more and
more the patriarchal peace of Sweetwater Farm.  "I dunno what's come
over the boys," their father grumbled; "al'ays showing off an'
jim-jeerin'.  Regilar cocks on a dunghill.  A few years agone I'd 've
cured it wi' the strap; but now there's no remedy."

William had challenged his eldest brother Jonathan to "put" a large
round-shot that lay in the verandah.  Their father had brought it home
from the capture of Louisbourg as a souvenir.  Jonathan and George had
served at Louisbourg too, in the Massachusetts Volunteers; but William,
though of age to fight, had been left at home to look after the farm and
his mother.  It had been a sore disappointment at the time; now that
Jonathan and George had taken on a sudden to boast, it rankled.
Hence the challenge.  The three younger lads joined in.  If they could
not defeat their seniors, they could at least dispute the mastery among
themselves.  Thereupon in all seriousness (ingenuous youths!) they voted
that Miss Josselin should be asked to umpire.


The contest took place next morning after breakfast, in a paddock beyond
the elms, with Ruth for umpire and sole spectator.  Nothing had been
said to the farmer, who was fast losing his temper with "these derned
wagerings," and might have come down with a veto that none dared
disobey.  He had ridden off, however, at sun-up to the mountain, to look
after the half-wild hogs he kept at pasture among the woods at its base.

Ruth measured out the casts conscientiously.  In no event would the
young men have disputed her arbitrament; but, as it happened, this
nicety was thrown away.  Jonathan's "put" of forty feet--the shot
weighed close upon sixteen pounds--easily excelled the others', who were
sportsmen and could take a whipping without bad blood or dispute.
The winner crowed a little, to be sure; it was the New England way.
But Lemuel the youngest, who had outgrown his strength, had made a
deplorable "put," and the rest jeered at him, to relieve their feelings.
The boy fired up.  "Oh, have your laugh!" he blazed, with angry tears in
his eyes.  "But when it comes to running, there's not one of you but
knows I can put circles round him."

"Take you on, this moment," answered up young Increase.  "Say, boys,
we'll all take him on."